Individual Biography

Samuel Bell

• Formal Name:
• First Date: 1815
• Last Date: 1819
• Function: Printer
• Locales: Shepherdstown
• Precis: Journeyman printer employed in the Virginia Monitor office at Shepherdstown (1820-21).
• Notes: Journeyman Printer
  Shepherdstown
  Journeyman printer employed in the Virginia Monitor office at Shepherdstown (1820-21).
  Bell was the younger brother of the Monitor's proprietor, Edward Bell (029). A native of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania – just north of Hagerstown, Maryland, across the Mason-Dixon line – he had trained at the press of his eldest brother, William Duffield Bell, who then published The Torch Light (1814-41) there. When Edward acquired the press and paper of Thomas Trice (418) in the summer of 1820, Samuel joined him in Shepherdstown, serving as the tradesman to his editor in the new venture. Yet, he has left very little trace in either the historical or the bibliographic record; barely a year into the Monitor's three-year run, Samuel Bell died, then just twenty-one years old.
  
  
  Personal Data
  
  
  
  Born:
  In
  1801
  Chambersburg, Franklin County, Pennsylvania
  
  Died:
  Sept. 23
  1821
  Shepherdstown, Virginia (now West Virginia)
  
  No spouse or children noted in Bell family records.
  
  Source: Musser, Shepherdstown; Scharf, Western Maryland; obituary in Hagerstown Torch Light.
  
• Related Bios:
  • Dr.Edward Bell
  • John McDonald Burke
  • Deborah Whitehead Lownes Pleasants
  • Samuel Pleasants, Jr.

This version of the Index of Virginia Printing was a gift from the estate of the site's creator, David Rawson. The content contained herein will not be updated, as it is part of the Library of Virginia's personal papers collection. For more information, please see David Rawson Index of Virginia Printing website. Accession 53067. Personal papers collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia .